Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. First of all, of
Speaker 1: this episode sounds at all different. It's Tori's fault. I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio today, but I'm using my normal microphone
Speaker 1: for home recording. But it may mean that it sounds
Speaker 1: a little different. Tarry, by the way, is also here.
Speaker 1: She's um She's waving and blowing kisses to all of
Speaker 1: you because she loves you so much. That might not
Speaker 1: be true, but there are definitely some hand gestures. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get to the tech news for Thursday, July twenty two,
Speaker 1: two thousand, twenty one. Earlier today, you might have had
Speaker 1: some problems using certain websites or web based services. For example,
Speaker 1: Delta Airlines customers found they couldn't use online check in
Speaker 1: for a while. Amazon customers were having trouble connecting to
Speaker 1: that site. Gamers saw the PlayStation network and Steam were
Speaker 1: down as well. So what the heck happened? Well, it
Speaker 1: appears that fault lies with part of acamize system. Now
Speaker 1: acam I is a c d N. Also, I could
Speaker 1: be mispronouncing it. It's a K A m AI, but
Speaker 1: it's a c d N that's a content delivery network.
Speaker 1: So as that name implies a com I is in
Speaker 1: the business of facilitating the movement of data across networks
Speaker 1: to customers. C d n's address an issue that we
Speaker 1: just can't otherwise get around, and that's the fact that
Speaker 1: the further you are away from a computer like a server.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you're trying to connect to a specific website. Well,
Speaker 1: the further away you are from that that server, the
Speaker 1: longer it's going to take for signals to pass between
Speaker 1: you and that server. And if the service you're trying
Speaker 1: to access is one that requires fast response, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's a streaming video game or something, that could be
Speaker 1: a problem. So if you want to access a specific
Speaker 1: companies services and that company happens to be located in
Speaker 1: Washington State, but you live in the state of Florida,
Speaker 1: which is all the way on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: you know, America, then you might have some delays. If
Speaker 1: your computer and the company's servers had to communicate across
Speaker 1: the entire country, you'd run into lag and that's where
Speaker 1: c d ends come in. They are essentially huge server
Speaker 1: farms located in specific geographic areas, and they function as
Speaker 1: a faster way to deliver Internet content. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like um mirrors of existing content. So instead of having
Speaker 1: to transmit you know, that episode of Modern Love across
Speaker 1: the entire United States, a c d N with the
Speaker 1: Modern Love content can step in closer to home. C
Speaker 1: d n s can also provide other services. They can
Speaker 1: act as a layer of protection against malicious attacks from hackers,
Speaker 1: liked DOS attacks, distributed denial of service attacks, and most
Speaker 1: of the time everything's just working fine and people are
Speaker 1: able to access services like Netflix or PlayStation games or
Speaker 1: whatever without a problem. But sometimes stuff goes wrong, and
Speaker 1: that's what happened today. Akama says that it was an
Speaker 1: emerging issue with its Edge DNS service, but as I'm
Speaker 1: recording this, it appears that the company's engineers have resolved
Speaker 1: the problem. It's just a reminder that there's always a
Speaker 1: point of failure in a given system, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: point of failure can be one that affects a lot
Speaker 1: of other systems. However, I have to take my hat
Speaker 1: off to those engineers who fix the problem relatively quickly.
Speaker 1: That's really impressive. You know, it really stinks when these
Speaker 1: things happen, but it's it's incredible to see how quickly
Speaker 1: people can respond and get things back on track, because
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big issue. Now. In an early episode,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that President Biden here in the United States
Speaker 1: issued an executive order that urged the Federal Trade Commission,
Speaker 1: or FTC, to look into the issue of the right
Speaker 1: to repair. Just in case you're not familiar with that term,
Speaker 1: that refers to stripping away the layers that companies will
Speaker 1: put in place that can discourage or outright prevent users
Speaker 1: from making their own repairs or going to an independent
Speaker 1: repair service, and instead they might put in layers that
Speaker 1: force those users to go to a corporate approved service company.
Speaker 1: And this can apply to everything from basic consumer electronics
Speaker 1: all the way up to things like giant tractors for agriculture.
Speaker 1: And this is a really big deal for people who
Speaker 1: either don't want to be tied down to a specific
Speaker 1: ecosystem or those who might not have easy access to
Speaker 1: corporate approved services or both. The FTC now says that
Speaker 1: the organization will step up law enforcement actions against companies
Speaker 1: that are engaged in quote illegal repair restrictions end quote.
Speaker 1: According to the site x d A. Now what constitutes
Speaker 1: illegal repair restrictions, Well, if it's part of an anti
Speaker 1: competitive strategy, it could violate the Sherman Act that deals
Speaker 1: with the issues of monopolies and anti competitiveness. And there
Speaker 1: are other laws that can play a role as well,
Speaker 1: And I may have to do a full episode about
Speaker 1: that at some point, because frankly, I am not that
Speaker 1: well read up on these laws, because let's get real,
Speaker 1: until really recently, no one was looking into enforcing those laws,
Speaker 1: so they weren't really playing a part. But I think
Speaker 1: that this is really encouraging. As the FDC points out,
Speaker 1: the denial of the right to repair leads to a
Speaker 1: lot of wastefulness, uh, And that can go from anything
Speaker 1: from the amount of time it takes for you to
Speaker 1: actually go to a company approved maintenance area to just
Speaker 1: throwing something away and buying a new one because you
Speaker 1: can't be bothered to take it to get repaired. None
Speaker 1: of those are really good things, So I think this
Speaker 1: might be a good move in general. In a different
Speaker 1: earlier episode, I talked a bit about the backlash against
Speaker 1: audacity that's the free to download audio recording and editing
Speaker 1: software that folks like yours truly use when recording podcasts
Speaker 1: from home. It's what I'm actually using right now instead
Speaker 1: of using our studios recording system because Tari won't let
Speaker 1: me do that anyway. Uh oh, look she's blowing more kisses.
Speaker 1: She's just so loving to a all right, anyway. A
Speaker 1: while back, there was this company called Muse or the
Speaker 1: Muse Group now that acquired Audacity and then released a
Speaker 1: version with some new privacy policies that raised a lot
Speaker 1: of eyebrows because those policies included data collection, uh policies
Speaker 1: and meaning data collected from users, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: a lot of data that could potentially be used with
Speaker 1: conjunction with with law enforcement. So it raised a lot
Speaker 1: of big questions about privacy and legality, and it led
Speaker 1: to a backlash in which some Audacity users were proposing
Speaker 1: that they develop a forked version of Audacity, to go
Speaker 1: back to an earlier version of Audacity and develop for
Speaker 1: that as an independent program in order to avoid the
Speaker 1: issues that they were seeing based on this updated privacy
Speaker 1: policy from the quote unquote real Audacity. That is not
Speaker 1: a great thing for the new owners to hear. I mean,
Speaker 1: if customers are saying they're gonna go and make their
Speaker 1: own version of your product just to avoid your policies,
Speaker 1: that's tough. Now Audacity has a new new privacy policy
Speaker 1: and it removes the sections that were causing the concern.
Speaker 1: So in a message to users, Audacity said the following
Speaker 1: quote phrasing has been adjusted to remove ambiguity or aid
Speaker 1: in transparency, in particular that we do not collect any
Speaker 1: additional information for law enforcement or any other purpose. We
Speaker 1: have explained the purpose of the two networking features, error
Speaker 1: reporting and update checking. We have removed the provision that
Speaker 1: discourages children under thirteen years old from using Audacity. We
Speaker 1: have taken steps to ensure that we never store a
Speaker 1: full IP address we now truncated before hashing or discarded entirely,
Speaker 1: and have reflected this change in the privacy policy document.
Speaker 1: We have made some changes to how we process error
Speaker 1: reports to ensure that we never store any potentially identifiable information. Further,
Speaker 1: they explained that any version of Audacity from three point
Speaker 1: zero point two or earlier has no networking capability at all,
Speaker 1: meaning there's no way for the company to collect any
Speaker 1: data from people who are using those versions of audacity.
Speaker 1: Whether all this is going to be enough to calm
Speaker 1: the critics remains to be seen, but it feels like
Speaker 1: it's at least the right thing to do. We've got
Speaker 1: some more news to report on, but before I get
Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. The
Speaker 1: state of California has filed a lawsuit against the video
Speaker 1: game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard, alleging that the company
Speaker 1: has a culture of harassment that makes the company a
Speaker 1: hostile work environment, particularly for women. In fact, the lawsuit
Speaker 1: alleges that there is a quote pervasive frat boy end
Speaker 1: quote culture there, and y'all, that phrasing definitely conjures up
Speaker 1: some negative images in my mind. But then you have
Speaker 1: to understand I went to college at the University of
Speaker 1: Georgia in the mid to late nineties, and the frats
Speaker 1: there were literally the worst. Like they made the news,
Speaker 1: that's how bad they were. Anyway, The allegations include lots
Speaker 1: of really despicable charges, everything from women being groped and
Speaker 1: otherwise assaulted, to women receiving far less pay for doing
Speaker 1: the same jobs as men, to one case where apparently
Speaker 1: an executive reportedly delegated his work to a female direct
Speaker 1: report so that he could play call of duty. Gross.
Speaker 1: Now I should add that the company says these charges
Speaker 1: are actually relating to the past, and that the Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard company of today does not reflect this image. In
Speaker 1: other words, they're saying, yeah, things used to be bad,
Speaker 1: but we have taken great strides to fix them, and
Speaker 1: we take this seriously. In fact, the company representatives have
Speaker 1: said that every charge is taken seriously and the company
Speaker 1: has made substantive moves to really change corporate culture. Now,
Speaker 1: I am sure that a more complete story will come
Speaker 1: out in court, assuming that this actually goes that far,
Speaker 1: and maybe we will hear whether or not the representatives
Speaker 1: are accurate right whether or not this this toxic culture
Speaker 1: still exists. It appears to at least have existed. But
Speaker 1: the question is is that how things are now. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know what to believe. I don't know anyone
Speaker 1: at that company, so I have no idea if it
Speaker 1: has changed significantly or if it's still a hostile work environment.
Speaker 1: But I will keep an eye on this story as
Speaker 1: it develops. One technology that tends to come up and
Speaker 1: conversation about the future is weather control. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that Cobra Commander was really obsessed with it. But
Speaker 1: when we get to the realities of tech and the weather,
Speaker 1: our understanding of how we can affect whether it gets
Speaker 1: a little bit wibbly wobbly. For years, people have attempted
Speaker 1: to seed clouds to induce rain over drought, and the
Speaker 1: question then pops up does that actually work? Which is
Speaker 1: actually kind of hard to say because it's difficult to
Speaker 1: test these things because it either rains or it doesn't
Speaker 1: rain after you seed the clouds. And if it does rain,
Speaker 1: then can you be sure that it would not have
Speaker 1: rained if you hadn't seeded the clouds? Like was the
Speaker 1: cloud seeding the thing that actually made it rain or
Speaker 1: was it going to rain anyway? Now, long term studies
Speaker 1: suggest that cloud seating is effective, like there there have
Speaker 1: been studies of snow packs over the course of several
Speaker 1: years that suggests that there is greater precipitation in years
Speaker 1: when cloud seeding was actually performed. But it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things it's very hard to see.
Speaker 1: In the short term. However, the United Arab Emirates is
Speaker 1: using a slightly different approach to the typical cloud seeding approach.
Speaker 1: The U A E is going to zap clouds with
Speaker 1: electricity to see if that makes it rain. So they're
Speaker 1: gonna be using drones to do this, and the idea
Speaker 1: is to actually create an electric charge on droplets of
Speaker 1: water that encourages the droplets to bind together. And as
Speaker 1: these droplets bind together, they're gonna they're gonna grow larger,
Speaker 1: They're gonna grow heavier and potentially heavy enough to fall
Speaker 1: his rain. Assuming this all works, which actually sounds pretty
Speaker 1: plausible to me at least, so I'll be very eager
Speaker 1: to see how this turns out. Though I should say
Speaker 1: I am a bit disappointed because I originally imagined that
Speaker 1: these drones were gonna fly up there and threatened clouds
Speaker 1: with electric shocks unless they would go ahead and rain
Speaker 1: and to ns out, that's not how that works, so
Speaker 1: that's a bummer. Finally, if you've listened to tech stuff
Speaker 1: for a while, you have certainly heard me talk about
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle company called Faraday Future, and not for
Speaker 1: necessarily positive reasons. I first learned about this company when
Speaker 1: I saw a concept model of an electric sports car
Speaker 1: at C E s way back in t and that
Speaker 1: concept looked super cool. It was one of those like,
Speaker 1: you know, gasp moments when you're walking the floor. It
Speaker 1: was extremely popular. Lots of people taking video and pictures
Speaker 1: of that thing. The company was this upstart ev producer
Speaker 1: that was taking shape in California and Nevada, and then
Speaker 1: news about weird stuff relating to this company began to
Speaker 1: pop up. The company founder had a different company back
Speaker 1: in China, that's where he's from, and that company was
Speaker 1: apparently in die or straits. It was starting to fail,
Speaker 1: and the Chinese government was extremely eager to have this
Speaker 1: founder come back to China and settle up with his creditors.
Speaker 1: The founder was extremely eager to not do that thing,
Speaker 1: because you know, answering for issues in China can sometimes
Speaker 1: be a pretty serious thing. So he also allegedly spent
Speaker 1: a lot of the company money as if it was
Speaker 1: his own personal bank account. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: at least perceived possible misuses of corporate funds. Things were
Speaker 1: not really looking on the up and up, in other words,
Speaker 1: so there were a lot of questions about whether Faraday
Speaker 1: would ever be able to produce a consumer vehicle. Because
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. So far it has not, and it all
Speaker 1: got very dramatic. And now it's time to add another
Speaker 1: bit of drama to this story because now Faraday Future
Speaker 1: is a publicly traded company. The same organization SHAN that
Speaker 1: was teetering on the brink of implosion is now publicly traded.
Speaker 1: So you would be well justified in asking how the
Speaker 1: heck could this happen? How could it go from almost
Speaker 1: falling apart to becoming a publicly traded company. H And
Speaker 1: by the way, that move of becoming publicly traded added
Speaker 1: like a billion dollars to the company's coffers, so that
Speaker 1: is incredibly significant. Well, it's because of a little thing
Speaker 1: called a SPACK or sp A C. And by a
Speaker 1: little thing, I mean a big thing. So a SPACK
Speaker 1: is a special purpose acquisition company. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of a work around for companies that want to go
Speaker 1: public but would otherwise have trouble with an initial public
Speaker 1: offering or i p O. And we've seen lots of
Speaker 1: stories about companies that had to back off and rethink
Speaker 1: their approach to an i p O, you know, like
Speaker 1: Uber companies that at one point we're really bullish about
Speaker 1: having an I P O. And then something happens and
Speaker 1: it kind of throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well,
Speaker 1: here's how a spack works. You get some investors and
Speaker 1: they create a company that does nothing. It's it's like
Speaker 1: like the old joke on Seinfeld. I mean, it literally
Speaker 1: is a company that does nothing except exist to pool resources.
Speaker 1: So the company that does nothing, you know, goes public
Speaker 1: and then this newly publicly traded company uses the assets
Speaker 1: that it has that otherwise are doing nothing to acquire
Speaker 1: the target company, you know, the one that would not
Speaker 1: be able to hold an I p O on its own.
Speaker 1: So Faraday Future never would have gotten an i p
Speaker 1: O off the ground, not not with the way the
Speaker 1: company has been mismanaged and miss run for the last
Speaker 1: several years. But by creating essentially a shell company that
Speaker 1: then can be publicly traded and use that company to
Speaker 1: purchase Faraday futures, that suddenly means that Faraday Future, by extension,
Speaker 1: is publicly traded. Kind of seems like a like almost
Speaker 1: like a bait and switch, but it's totally illegal. It's
Speaker 1: something that can actually happen without any you know, legal
Speaker 1: implications whatsoever. Now along the way through this process, as
Speaker 1: this spack acquired Faraday Future and made it a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company. The founder of Faraday Future effectively surrendered control.
Speaker 1: So today things are very different from how they were
Speaker 1: in years past. But does this mean that Faraday Future
Speaker 1: is on track to actually produce electric vehicles after years
Speaker 1: of languishing in a melodramatic mess of financial shenanigans. Well,
Speaker 1: the plan is to get things up and running so
Speaker 1: that the company can release an suv electric vehicle sometime
Speaker 1: by the end of next year. We'll see if that happened.
Speaker 1: I think some skepticism is warranted, but I would actually
Speaker 1: love to see the company deliver upon that initial promise
Speaker 1: I first encountered back in two thousand sixteen at c
Speaker 1: E S. I don't want to see a company fail.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, my skepticism is up only because really,
Speaker 1: if you look into the history of Faraday Future, and
Speaker 1: I've got I've got an episode about it, a couple
Speaker 1: of them, you start to see where there's enough history
Speaker 1: of shenanigans going on there to make anyone feel a
Speaker 1: little cautious. But that is it for this episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. That is the news for Thursday, July twenty
Speaker 1: two one. I hope you are all well. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The
Speaker 1: best way to do that is over on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle we use for the show is tech Stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. M
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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